Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 600 posts

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#391

Post by ryandrake »

finder83 wrote: post #334
chlodwig wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are all boys a problem? And it should be noted -- it's not the boys that are the problem it is the schools. Raise young boys in a way that is completely stifling and unnatural compared to how boys were raised for tens of thousands years based on our evolution, and then diagnose these boys as having a mental problem. No, it is society that has the mental problem.

Agreed entirely. The goals of our factory system education are not in the best interest of the individuals participating. We home school largely for that reason...I want my children, both our boy and girls, to have individual creative thought, to explore the world, to rough-house, and to not just be a "good citizen" of society. Good citizens rarely make the world a better place. I want them to challenge, think, be in…

Careful though. Go too far in the opposite direction from “rule following good citizen” and you get conspiracy believers, YouTube Do-Your-Researchers, and Anti-Maskers. There needs to be a middle ground.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#392

Post by whimsicalism »

ganzuul wrote: post #382
whimsicalism wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know why the pretty obvious explanation for why this sort of thing is common is downvoted. Even if you're some weirdo who thinks there is no gender discrimination in the workplace, you can't deny that many women at least perceive there to be gender discrimination, and one of the tips passed around is to stop self-deprecating yourself in front of your colleagues.

I don't know for a fact either, but would guess the reason is a childhood of girls telling each other nasty things would make them weary of harsh language even when directed at the self. With that part unmentioned, the GP seems to assign dubious priorities to human motivations.

> With that part unmentioned, the GP seems to assign dubious priorities to human motivations.

Really? The only motivating factor assumed in the GP looks to be that women want to be successful in their careers. Is that a dubious claim?

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#393

Post by SkyBelow »

szhu wrote: post #264
twgp123 wrote: post #180

Throwaway because this is one of the data points you are required to ignore in polite society. Girls receive better grades until you blind the teachers. Teachers are biased in favor of girls, maybe because their behavior is better. The effect of biased grading is enormous and a huge disadvantage to our boys. > Gender-biased grading accounts for 21 percent of boys falling behind girls in math during middle school. [1]…

Serious question, why is this a data point we are required to ignore? There's been a lot of discourse about bias lately, so I feel like this is a data point people will welcome hearing. Thanks for sharing it.

If you raise a point that shows a slice of society discriminates against men more than women you'll face criticisms that range from "what about the men" to being called an incel to being let known you are not welcome in a community. It is worse online than off but it happens in both. I've personally had it happen numerous times when bringing up statistics concerning gender bias in prison sentencing.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#394

Post by xyzzyz »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #375
whimsicalism wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Based on that data, this has likely flipped since most commenters here were in school.

My wife was a teacher and she noted that most over her male colleagues were leaving, especially in on the elementary and middle school level. Too many assumptions or allegations, plus the perception that guys can't be nurturing. Most of the men still in education were older and were able to migrate away from day-to-day teaching into admin roles. In 20 years those guys will be gone and there won't be any male teachers…

> Too many assumptions or allegations, plus the perception that guys can't be nurturing.

Sounds like very hostile and sexist environment. I wonder what efforts the school systems take to ensure gender diversity among its employees.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#395

Post by Causality1 »

zionic wrote: post #337
908B64B197 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With shrinking recess time and PE disappearing from some schools, I also wonder if a lot of this is caused by boys having more energy and needing more movement than girls. Energy has to go somewhere so it ends up manifesting itself in behaviors that are deemed "disruptive" (really, not sitting still and being unable to concentrate on tasks). Maybe it's something that female administrators and teachers fail to underst…

Future generations will consider us barbarians for dosing our young boys with drugs because we providing them with physical education/exercise was inconvenient to us. They'll also be able to datamine the internet from this time period and use our own words to hang us.

It'll be a long time yet. We haven't even moved past cutting pieces of them off for cosmetic reasons.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#396

Post by _-david-_ »

ipnon wrote: post #387
_-david-_ wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best situation would be to mostly separate boys and girls in classes. We could then do things for boys that are generally better for boys and do things for girls that are generally better for girls. There probably should be co-ed schools so boys and girls can still socialize during lunch and other breaks, just not during classes.

One problem: separate public education for boys and girls is illegal in the US.

There are non-coed schools (not sure about coed schools but segregated classes like I am advocating for?) in the US. Not sure if only private schools are allowed to do that?

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#397

Post by SkyBelow »

learn_more wrote: post #379
firefoxd wrote: post #37

This is anecdotal but I'm sure many people are seen this increasingly. In the past 10 years on the job, I'm seeing more guys make jokes about how stupid they are. Every time they make a single mistake they say "oh my God, if my head wasn't attached to my shoulders..." Then it becomes a competition of who has done the dumbest thing. I know it's just being playful, but you rarely see the opposite. Turn the tables, I wa…

Only confident people mock themselves.

I have to disagree with this. While there are plenty of confident people who will mock themselves in humor, I've also known many people whose self mocking hides a very negative self image that needs serious if not professional help that they often don't get.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#398

Post by 8note »

hc-taway wrote: post #314
jacobolus wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> son needs more discipline This does not seem like the right conclusion. More like "needs running around time and free play". Cf. e.g. https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/discipline-problem-solutio... https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/beyond-discipline-article/

Two of my kids (one a boy and one a girl) act absolutely nuts and "must" have something like ADHD... until you make sure they run around outside at least 4hrs a day, consistently. Then they're fine. Unfortunately this is effectively impossible to achieve for 2-3 months every year, with school in session and short Winter days. They're in lower elementary school but I think their total recess time per day is only about…

In a coldish part of Canada, I think I had 2.5hours of outside or PE time through elementary school

The same amount of PE, along with became optional through junior high school and high school.

In elementary school, recess/lunch were required to be spent outside (unless it's -30C or so)

You could spend up to 15min at a time inside to warm up, dry off your mittens, and maybe grab a hot chocolate but after that you were kicked back outside

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#399

Post by [deleted] »

Causality1 wrote: post #395
zionic wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Future generations will consider us barbarians for dosing our young boys with drugs because we providing them with physical education/exercise was inconvenient to us. They'll also be able to datamine the internet from this time period and use our own words to hang us.

It'll be a long time yet. We haven't even moved past cutting pieces of them off for cosmetic reasons.

[deleted]

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#400

Post by 8note »

whimsicalism wrote: post #310
mattmcknight wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'd assume most school administrators are women. > At least in the United States, this isn’t at all true. 54% female, 46% male https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cls.asp

Interesting. Based on that data, this has likely flipped since most commenters here were in school.

In elementary school there were maybe 3 male teachers, but the non-teacher staff were all male.

It's only high school where the teachers were about balanced, and idk about the non-teachers

Post reply on HN